


Strings

by wheatear



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-15
Updated: 2011-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-03 06:42:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheatear/pseuds/wheatear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Men's hearts are there to be played. The Petrova women are masterful musicians.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strings

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://softly-me.livejournal.com/profile)[**softly_me**](http://softly-me.livejournal.com/)'s [threesome](http://softly-me.livejournal.com/173671.html?thread=3458151#t3458151) comment ficathon. Prompt: Katherine, Isobel, Elena; _"The heart was made to be broken."_

They are all heart-breakers, the Petrova women.

Katherine is the oldest. She started young. She did not mean to play with the hearts of men, but their strings make such enchanting music.

It's been five hundred years, and she has every note memorised. She has distilled romance into seduction, courtship into a game, emotion into manipulation. She can break a heart with a word. She does it over and over and over again, because if you take a heart it means someone wants you, and if you break it, it means they care.

The Salvatores are two in a long line of men who all thought they were the one.

Katherine wants to be loved; she does not love back.

*

  
Isobel was sixteen years old when she walked away from John.

She learns from Katherine that as a vampire you must do two things. One, move on. Two, do so without regret.

“That won't be a problem,” she says.

After all, she started young.

*

  
She says nothing about missing Ric. 

*

  
Katherine says nothing about the man who fathered her child. She is not seventeen; she will not give away her heart to be broken. 

*

  
Elena is seventeen years old. She has already begun.

She's too preoccupied with grief to understand how badly she hurt Matt or even to care all that much. She has not yet had her heart broken; she doesn't know how it feels.

She moves on, and oh, these are the same chords, the same brothers, falling again for soft brown eyes and romantic whispers from beautiful lips.

Elena means them; she is still young. Katherine knows how this will end.

*

  
Isobel watches Elena, sees how she has both Salvatore brothers' heartstrings in her fingers, ready to be twisted and plucked and torn at will.

Isobel knows.

Elena doesn't realise it yet. But she will.


End file.
